Online Video Industry Index
Written by Emre Sokullu and edited by Richard MacManus
There are now so many companies vying to be the next YouTube, it's easy to lose track of them all. So let's take a look at the entire online video industry and categorize the major players. Our thanks to Ali Dagli of Savvian, for providing us a lot of the useful data listed here.
In this post we've summarized the latest video industry innovations under the following categories:
- Video Sharing
- Intermediaries
- Video Search
- Video eCommerce
- Video Editing & Creation
- Rich Media Advertising
- P2P (Peer To Peer)
- Video Streaming
- Vlogosphere
Video Sharing
Video sharing - and particularly YouTube - have been the poster boys of the online video industry so far. Video sharing sites allow you to upload your videos and share them with others. But even if you are not a content producer, you can watch others movies. So this is a very consumer-oriented industry that has been popularized via blog-based viral marketing.
- YouTube - Like other Sequoia Capital investments Yahoo and Google, YouTube outperformed its competitors and has become a clear winner in video sharing. And Google didn't skip this opportunity in the online video space, as it took advantage of YouTube's legal hassles and snapped up the market leader for the relatively small sum(!) of $1.65B. Even though Google already had its own video sharing site, Google Video, this acquisition showed Google's ambitions in the online video space.
- Yahoo Video remains well behind Google Video and YouTube. Also Yahoo Video does not support as many video formats as the others do. For example, you cannot upload your videos directly from your mobile, because this format is not supported yet. Yahoo is trying to increase Yahoo Video usage by making it a part of their other well established properties. For instance, you can see Yahoo Video stories on their homepage.
- SoapBox is Microsoft's answer to the latest developments in the video sharing industry. It is in invitation only beta status for now, but will probably go live very soon. It is expected to be a crucial part of Microsoft's new Live.com initiative, although the site is currently under the MSN domain.
- Grouper was snapped up by Sony for $60M and is expected to be integrated with Sony's future digital cameras.
- PhotoBucket - a crucial component of most social networking sites and the number one photo sharing site, did not miss the big opportunity in online video space and has a video component too.
- Webshots - like PhotoBucket, photo sharing site Webshots (a CNET property) has also caught the online video wave.
- Ning - Netscape founder Marc Andreesen's latest venture recently turned its focus onto video features and in some sense became a player in the online video sharing space as well.
- iFilm was acquired by Viacom, the owner of MTV Networks, in October 2005. The site claims to get more than 10 million visitors per month.
- MetaCafe - Israel based company is estimated to be the second biggest player in this space after YouTube. The company does not limit itself to its home country and has big international ambitions. It was recently rumoured to be acquired by Yahoo for $200M. The company is backed by top tier VC companies like Benchmark Capital and Accel Partners. MetaCafe does not have a time limitation like YouTube, and offers a rich desktop client for easy uploading. Their unique revenue sharing program was a great innovation in this space.
- DailyMotion - The number one video sharing site in France is also a key player in the global arena. Allows 150MB of video upload and has a larger default video size.
- GoFish - Publicly traded company is worth $126M as of this writing. Its popularity is well below others though.
- Dave.tv - The site wants you to program your own channel with your favourite movies, music and clips, then broadcast it from your web page, blog or MySpace. This is a well thought through viral marketing tactic, but the site's traffic seems low at this time.
Some of the upcomers in video sharing are: Vimeo, VideoJug, Kewego, China's Yoqoo, Revver,Veoh, iBloks, VidiLife, Blip.TV, VodPod, Fliqz.
Image from Go2Web20.net
Intermediaries
Do you think you can legally host your commercial videos on YouTube or MetaCafe? The short answer is no. For professional use, you'll need to contact intermediary companies to do this job for you. Their main duty is to connect publishers, video creators and advertisers.
- BrightCove connects video creators with web publishers. This is a huge company that raised ~ $60M from investors including New York Times in their latest round of financing. Their syndication marketplace consists of 1319 channels as of this writing.
- NBBC - powered by NBC, connects businesses that create video with businesses that want video, in other words a video marketplace. Note: the logo can mislead you and take you to a porn site; onbbc.com. Be careful, and I humbly recommend that NBBC switch to another logo!
- VideoEgg - Connecticut based company empowers the video publishing of big consumers like TED events, Bebo, Hi5 and America Online. Raised $12M in Series C from August Capital and Josh Kopelman's First Round Capital.
- Roo.TV is yet another big player in the video intermediaries field. They are traded in NASDAQ (RGRP) and their market value is $90M as of this writing. Some of their partners are Pioneer, Verizon, Warner Bros.
- Maven Networks partners include 20th Century, The Weather Channel, TimeOut New York, Walt Disney, Nike, and Sony Pictures. Accel Partners and General Catalyst Partners invested $10M in this company in 2004.
- NarrowStep is traded in OTC and currently has a market valuation of $41M. Partners include Land Rover.
- Gotuit Media has deals to power video content from EMI Music, UMG, Major League Soccer, and others. They also do video editing and creation (SceneMaker) and video sharing. We've covered Gotuit before on R/WW.
Other players include thePlatform and The FeedRoom, which empowers top companies like HP, Wal-Mart, Sun, USA Today.
Video Search
- Google Video - after the acquisition of YouTube, Google now focuses its Google Video property on video search. This is a smart strategy, because the Google brand largely means search. YouTube was already the number one video sharing site and Google Video has exclusive access to all YouTube and Google Video data - which makes Google Video search much superior to others.
- AOL Video Search is a successful video search service from AOL. AOL had this capability after acquiring the successful startup Truveo in early 2006.
- blinkx differs itself from the crowd with its innovative interface, which shows a preview of videos in the search results. They also get satisfactory results from a variety of sites.
- Pixsy is a successful, independent video search startup. It returned satisfactory results in our test queries.
- Mamma - the site claims to provide lots of search options, but their focus is video. In our tests it was satisfactory.
- ClipBlast claims to have the largest online video collection, but the results don't back this up.
- TV Eyes is different, because it crawls not video sharing sites like YouTube - but real TV channels.
Video eCommerce
Video eCommerce sites allow you to legally stream the latest cinema movies and TV shows from your computer.
- Guba was one of the first to enter this market, being founded in 1998. They are not only a video eCommerce site, but have free offerings and also a video sharing component. But video sharing on Guba is very small compared to video eCommerce. One of Guba's co-founders left the company after the YouTube acquisition and said in an interview that YouTube won the big prize - and there will be no more big prizes in the industry!
- Amazon Unbox can be easily described as the iTunes of videos. Unbox allows you to preview and buy a wide selection of TV shows and movies for very low prices, starting from $1.99. The videos can be watched via an exclusive client app from Amazon.
- MovieFlix offers videos in Real format. They offer 2 membership programs: free and premium. Besides the freely accessible videos, you can pay a monthly fee of $7.99 and access their 4000 titles - the quality is arguable though.
- Vongo - if you are not a US resident, don't even try visiting their site. Well, you can use proxy servers, but Vongo has strict access restrictions - not only limited by browser and OS types, but also your location. The service works in USA only and they are known for their TV spots. The service requires you to install a client, then you pay $9.99 per month to get access to an unlimited number of movies.
- MovieBeam is yet another video sharing site. It is pay per watch based and the prices start from $1.99.
This is another crowded market. Other players include MovieLink, CinemaNow, MarketBeam and the video eCommerce offerings of bigcos like Apple, Real and WalMart. Also, the Venice Project (Joost) from the Skype founders is targeting this market. Check out a recent Techcrunch comparison to review some of companies mentioned under this category.
Video Creation & Editing
You have videos, but how do you edit them? Are you willing to stick with desktop apps and pay hundreds of dollars in license fees? The Web is the answer again. The following sites are generally known to be good companions to video sharing sites.
- JumpCut - this video editing site was acquired by Yahoo right after it got to its public beta status. It is expected to be embedded into Yahoo Video. This will bring a clear editing advantage to Yahoo over the others. Yahoo is currently far behind Google in the video space overall, so they should hurry up and integrate JumpCut!
- EyeSpot - was invested in by Michael Robertson of mp3.com and Yahoo's JumpCut acquisition increases our expectations for this company to get bought by Google. The mix system would also be handy for MySpace's core user group, musicians who shoot their clip and then remix it to publish on their MySpace page. So News Corp is another potential acquirer.
- Lycos Mix - no, Lycos is not dead. Lycos Mix, along with Lycos Cinema, is designed to take Lycos to the next level in the online video space.
- Dabble - It's not exactly video editing, but playlist making with other videos fetched from video sharing sites.
- Mojiti - China based company was covered recently by Read/WriteWeb. It allows you to add notations to your videos. Mojiti is also a video sharing site targeting the Chinese market.
Other players include, but not limited to, MovieMasher, MotionBox, Canopus and Avid.
Rich Media Advertising
Another hot area is rich media advertising. This is the field that will pump blood (=money) to all other services. Rich Media Advertising can consist of advanced computer science techniques like voice recognition (speech to text) and visual object recognition. We will just list the names, as most of them are very early stage.
Google and AdBrite are the major players. aQuantive (a $2B company traded at NASDAQ), KlipMart, PostRoller, eyeWonder, eyeBlaster, DoubleClick, adInterax (acquired by Yahoo! last year), padaddies, pointroll are other players.
P2P
Peer to peer is taking an important place in video sharing. Video sharing requires large bandwidth, which is why the burn rate of these sites is very high and only the VC backed ones survive. P2P is an answer to this problem, by spreading the bandwidth weight to clients using this system. There have been some recent large investments in companies working in this field.
- BitTorrent - Creators of the popular open source P2P file sharing protocol do not own the protocol itself, but own one of the most popular clients and a search site. They recently got $20M funding from top tier firms like Accel Partners and acquired another popular bittorrent client µTorrent.
- Azureus - Creators of the Java based popular open source bittorrent client, Azureus is now entering the web space with Zudeo. They recently closed a $12M Series B investment from RedPoint Ventures and BV Capital.
- Kontiki is a VeriSign company.
Video Streaming
So who do you think serves you all these videos? Video hosting is not an easy job!
- Akamai is known as the world leader and serves big customers including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. The company is traded on NASDAQ and has a market cap of $9B.
- Limelight Networks is the site that powers YouTube, MySpace, iFilm and many others. They are growing fast and their last investment round was $130M, led by Goldman Sachs.
- VitalStream was bought by Internap in 2006 for $217M.
Others include Savvis and RawFlow
Vlog-o-sphere
Blogs and photologs have already taken over many peoples lives - being an excellent way to share, communicate and self-express. And now with the commodization of digital cameras, comes the vlogs - a.k.a. video blogs.. They are either for fun or self expression, but a big industry can blossom here - there are a lot of opportunities. Tomorrows vlogs, for example, are candidates to replace your favourite daily TV shows. And popular vlogs don't just attract ads, but they also hold the potential to sign partnership deals with video sharing sites. Examples:
- Ask A Ninja - this surprise hit recently become a member of Federated Media, John Battelle's directory of popular blogs.
- Rocketboom is the best example of how far vlogs can go. This vlog is dedicated to reporting the latest developments in internet culture, in an original and entertaining way. It looks so professional that you may not able to differentiate it from TV shows you watch.
Conclusion
The list is certainly not complete. And this categorization is subject to change, for example with upcoming stealth mode startups. The innovation and opportunities in the online video industry are endless. Please help us take this list to the next level, by noting other companies you know of in the comments.
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good job.
thanx
Posted by: focsa | February 13, 2007 1:20 PM
Yes, this is one of the types of post that keeps RWW one of the subscriptions I keep, no matter how brutally I prune my blogroll.
Posted by: Andrew | February 13, 2007 1:30 PM
Exactly the kind of posts I like to read (and write (; ). Great roundup.
Posted by: franticindustries | February 13, 2007 1:58 PM
You are missing a big one: Webshots
Posted by: Narendra | February 13, 2007 1:59 PM
Thanks Narendra, I've added Webshots.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | February 13, 2007 2:08 PM
In the future, our economy will come to a screeching halt because the only thing people will be doing is uploading or downloading videos.
Posted by: Kind And Thoughtful | February 13, 2007 2:23 PM
I'm surprised you didn't mention one of my favorite clients, IVT: the webcasting provider released the first ever "video webcasting for dummies" product last month--a do-it-yourself video webcasting and podcasting application called Studio. As you no doubt have noted, there are a lot of players in the consumer space and in the business space--Studio is basically the business video answer, for the masses. Check it out, it's a pretty straightforward tool.
For the record, round-ups are also what I appreciate about Read/Write, as it helps cut down on the clutter. I can't understand how anyone can get work done all day and still pay attention to the zillions of updates from some of those other blogs...
Posted by: Matt Mendolera | February 13, 2007 2:51 PM
Hi,
it seems out Twango (www.twango.com) is missing out. I don't know how big their userbase is, but they have a lot of nice features.
Posted by: Richard | February 13, 2007 2:52 PM
Great coverage of the industry. Not every player, but extremely comprehensive in showing how it all works.
This will take a while to digest.
Great Research Emre, Thanks so much.
Posted by: Kin Lane | February 13, 2007 3:30 PM
I'm curious to know if you felt a product like HelloWorld fit into this category. I mean I think it does, but I'm not sure how it compares.
helloworld.com
Posted by: Dave C. | February 13, 2007 3:44 PM
Also have a look at itiva.com as a P2p type of contender.
Posted by: 24pfilms | February 13, 2007 6:26 PM
awesome job. very useful.
Sandeep
http://www.onlinevideopunch.com
covering internet video industry
Posted by: sandeep arora | February 13, 2007 6:45 PM
That clarifies a few things. A wonderfully thorough post. Thanks.
Posted by: Benjamin | February 13, 2007 10:01 PM
I think http://www.compfused.com and http://www.viddler.com probably deserve a spot on this list as well. :) Haven't heard of a few on here either though. Good list :) Thanks.
Posted by: david | February 13, 2007 10:20 PM
Want to Save Google Videos to your hard drive to play later? Try this web tool
Download Google Videos
Posted by: download google videos | February 13, 2007 10:30 PM
Great entry here. You might add Vidavee to the intermediaries section - they enable video, customers include Huffington Post and manandwife.tv
www.vidavee.com
Posted by: Anthony | February 13, 2007 10:38 PM
Would love to show you SplashCast if you haven't seen it yet - http://splashcastmedia.com - could be placed in several of those categories.
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick | February 13, 2007 10:48 PM
Add Cuts in video editing.
Also Dabble is not at all video editing- actually it is video searching (as Mary Hodder would be glad to point out).
This space is getting chaotic - nice effort
Posted by: Harry | February 14, 2007 12:47 AM
Great summary, though I'm missing twistage and magnify.
Posted by: Ran | February 14, 2007 12:53 AM
You should add bubbleply.com to video creation and editing.
Posted by: gerry | February 14, 2007 1:57 AM
Why didn't you include Yahoo! Video in the Video Search category ? Video Search has been available on Yahoo! for years and you can find videos from everywhere on the web (from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo! Video, Yahoo! Music, ... any website).
Posted by: Michael | February 14, 2007 2:25 AM
I'm surprised he didn't mention anything about sites like http://www.streamick.com or http://www.channelchooser.com .. I think they might be included in that list aswell..
Great post by the way, thanks.
Posted by: stef | February 14, 2007 3:01 AM
For Long Tail Internet TV Series he didn't meantion sites like our own Network2 - http://network2.tv
Posted by: Jeff Pulver | February 14, 2007 3:51 AM
Hi
Under Video Creation, you might want to add Celtx - the open source media pre-production application.
Which just so happens to be releasing a new version today.
Thanks
Posted by: Fred | February 14, 2007 5:20 AM
Not sure how you forgot eBaumsworld.com? They basically pioneered the genre, and remain at the top despite the sudden hoopla over online video.
Maybe they need a pretty web2.0 logo so you could include them in your misinformed "industry" article.
Now we need a "Wannabe Industry Experts Who Spam Digg With Buzzword Articles Yet Lack Any Experience Or Actual Knowledge In Said Industry Index"
Posted by: infoflux | February 14, 2007 5:26 AM
Check out www.PodZinger.com for audio and video search. They use speech to text technology to search the entire content of video so you don't have to rely on user-generated tags to find what you are looking for.
Posted by: Kelby | February 14, 2007 5:31 AM
You also forgot Peer Impact who where the first P2P company to sign with a Major Studio back in November of 2005 (NBC\Universal) and then Warner and FOX in July of 2006 .\
Peer Impact rents Hollywood movies on a pay view basis and has a innovative revenue sharing model where its customers are paid for sharing content that purchased through the network.
http://www.peerimpact.com
You also forgot Joost and Bubblegum.
Bittorrent Inc doesnt even have a product on the market as of this month so its movie download product is essentially vaporware.
Posted by: Matt_ | February 14, 2007 5:41 AM
How about Scouta . From what I understand they are soon to launch and differentiate themselves from any of the areas you mention. They are about video and audio recommendations as opposed to searching. I'm a beta tester and I find I'm spending less time searching for content and just using the videos recommended to me. There is so much content out there now that it's a daunting task finding videos that appeal to you.
From the Scouta blog
Search is incredibly important to content these days. There is so much that we rely on it to find everything–I do anyway. However, it’s not the only way to find great content. In fact recommendations make a much more compelling way to find content, especially audio and video. Whether a friend mentions a great new show, or a group you below to suggests some great listening, recommendations are usually more reliable that stumbling around search results: especially with so much content online.
That’s why we’ve built a few ways to be given recommendations for online audio and video. Imagine turning on your television and having a bunch of relevant shows queued up waiting for you to watch, ones that you didn’t know about, but when you watch them you realise they match your tastes or interests. That’s what Scouta is aiming for.
Posted by: Bronwen | February 14, 2007 5:45 AM
ooops Bablegum....
www.joost.com
www.bablegum.com
Posted by: Matt_ | February 14, 2007 5:46 AM
Sorry try this link for scouta and just incase, :)
http://www.scouta.com/
Posted by: Bronwen | February 14, 2007 5:57 AM
http://www.clipfish.com a german site, has already tv commercials. don't ask me where the money comes from, but it seems very successfull.
Posted by: ccarpo | February 14, 2007 6:12 AM
http://www.emokoo.com came across this the other day and they seem to be allowing you to bring all of your viedos from sites listed above together.
Posted by: john | February 14, 2007 6:15 AM
Hi Richard,
Thanks for including Dabble.
We've actually indexed almost 8 million videos for search, playlisting and social interaction, including a wiki style read/write ability for logged in users to edit the records of each video.
Was thinking that maybe we belonged in Search or if you make it, a "discovery" category.. as we think discovery is where it's at.
Thanks,
mary
Posted by: Mary Hodder | February 14, 2007 6:15 AM
I assume you mean limelight networks, not limelight the editing house?
http://www.limelightnetworks.com/
Google is a magical thing!
Posted by: CharlesV | February 14, 2007 6:29 AM
While these search sites are cool - like how Blinkx.com indexes a site based off of its audio, it seems like this is largely irrelevant to todays internet video market. They want torrents of tv shows or they want the hottest videos. It seems like search is limited to finding previously viewed videos or ones they've heard about.
It seems the future of video is in making things smaller, cutting away the bs. I think more niche sites will arise that actually qualify their content and serve only the best on more specific genre's. These will be the sites that "cross the chasm" into true mainstream. Sites like DoHowTo.com come to mind in that it cleanly lets you access thousands of software videos by program and subcategory. No bs, just straight to the exact piece of content you want.
Posted by: CharlesR | February 14, 2007 6:55 AM
Here's a new site for Video Sharing.
http://www.yaaway.com
Posted by: Gord Davis | February 14, 2007 7:09 AM
Nice list, just curious as to why you totally ommited video content producers? You know, the sub-category that actually makes all of these other sub-categories relevant?
Posted by: ashkan karbasfrooshan | February 14, 2007 7:19 AM
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the omission of DivX or Stage6 (www.stage6.com).
If you are concerned at all about the quality of your videos or being able to watch them off of your PC on any of the 70 million DivX devices, then check out Stage6.
Ben...
Posted by: Ben | February 14, 2007 7:26 AM
great list - would add vidavee and reality digital to the intermediaries.
Posted by: gzino | February 14, 2007 7:26 AM
you missed Sevenload but you shouldn't.
@#30: clipfish is driven by a big german media company also driving some tv stations - doesn't make it really better but.. :)
Posted by: Frank | February 14, 2007 7:26 AM
There is also, mefeedia.com :)
It's a great place for thousands of videobloggers and podcasters and their audiences to connect. We provide a number of tools for the vlogosphere to help videobloggers share and promote their video blogs.
You can ‚ÄúRoll Your Own Channel‚Ä? (your videoblog and podcast ‚Äúinbox‚Ä?) that keeps track of your favorite video and audio shows, updates you automatically when there is a new episode, and then downloads the shows to any place you choose (iPod, PSP, XBox, or even SecondLife)
Posted by: Devlon | February 14, 2007 8:02 AM
This list is Awesome! Talk about inundating! I love seeing more and more outlets, technology, platforms etc. cropping up everywhere. Our company, IndieFlix provides content for so many of these on-line solutions and the more solutions the more opportunity to make money and get more exposure. This gives us the ability to empower an independent filmmaker even more so. While this new frontier is being defined and we wait to see which technology will emerge as best use and practice we have the ability to represent the indie filmmaker and cut a new path not try and get noticed in the dust of the Hollywood Blockbuster! Here's to the evolving present state of chaos and inundation for soon to follow there will be order and clarity. There are a few that didn't make the list but who can keep up? Thank you.
Posted by: Scilla Andreen - IndieFlix | February 14, 2007 9:35 AM
VTVLive.com is a startup that puts more focus on quality rather than quantity of videos.
Posted by: VM | February 14, 2007 10:46 AM
What about vSocial.com?
Posted by: TJ | February 14, 2007 10:52 AM
Hi Rishard and Emre,
I see the logo for PureVideo.com but no mention of the search destination, itself. For the time being, I believe PureVideo, Pixsy and Blinkx are the only Web-wide video search engines, the others only search for content in their own domains - ie) Google and AOL.
PureVideo is also outperforming Blinkx, Pixsy, TV Eyes, Mama, ClipBlast, and Truveo - see Alexa or Compete. Not bad for launching only 5 months ago. PureVideo is currently the Net's most trafficked Web-wide video search destination so its surprising not to see it mentioned here.
Also I don't see PureVideo Networks' other properties, StupidVideos or GrindTV. GrindTV is now the 20th most trafficked sports site in the US, and number one in action sports, and StupidVideos is ranked 6th in US video marketshare, according to Compete.
All the same, this is a pretty comprehensive list with a lot a new and siginificant players.
Very informative - thank you.
Posted by: Megan | February 14, 2007 11:14 AM
Thanks all for your great feedback! We will go through it all and update the post in due course. Keep the suggestions coming....
Posted by: Richard MacManus | February 14, 2007 11:30 AM
Great list, but how about AtomFilms? They survived the dotcom crash and broke the big JibJab animations during the Gore/Bush election. Plus, they have been paying their content creators from the beginning, since 1998.
Posted by: Pete | February 14, 2007 12:07 PM
Podcast Spot (http://www.podcastspot.com) is focused on podcasting, but we host video as well as audio. One of the neat features that might warrant a mention on this list is our automatic media conversion. Creators upload their video, and we convert it to a bunch of different formats automatically so that it can be easily transferred to portable devices, etc.
Anyway, excellent list, thanks for posting this!
Posted by: Mack D. Male | February 14, 2007 12:08 PM
In reading through this site, seems one should look at CacheLogic as a new type of CDN for video content delivery...
Posted by: Gary Croke | February 14, 2007 12:11 PM
For video search, there's also purevideo.com that's in beta.
Posted by: mark | February 14, 2007 1:12 PM
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